Versindaba
~ ‘n Kollektiewe weblog vir die Afrikaanse digkuns ~

Jean-Paul Sartre

Dit is darem fassinerend hoe intellektuele en skrywers uit die openbare oog kan verdwyn; of, wanneer hulle daar bly, stelselmatig verander word in figure van minagting. So asof hulle nagedagtenis moet boet vir die roem en bewondering wat ons voorheen aan hulle verleen het!

Jean-Paul Sartre is so ‘n figuur. Op sy dag was hy seker die mees beroemde filosoof op aarde, en boonop die eerste en enigste skrywer wat nog ooit die Nobelprys vir Letterkunde van die hand gewys het. Maar is daar iemand wat hom nog lees? Of hom selfs ernstig opneem as skrywer en denker?

Dit blyk asof Sartre die karikatuur geword het van die selfbelangrike, obskure en boheemse Paryse intellektueel; van die tipiese kampusradikaal met sy idealistiese, soms sentimentele en dikwels opportunistiese politieke oortuigings en kwasi-intervensies. Filosofies het hy die absolute teenpool, en selfs die teiken, geword vir feitlik elke intellektuele beweging in Frankryk sedert die strukturalisme van Levi-Strauss. Van regs is hy sedert die 1970’s aangeval as ‘n hardvogtige, siniese ondersteuner van die Stalinisme en ander vorme van totalitarisme en ‘n slagoffer van oordrewe Euro-selfhaat oor kolonialisme. Van links is hy aangeval as beide inkonsekwent in sy marxisme en naïef in sy geloof in menslike vryheid en agentskap.

En as ’n skrywer van letterkundige werke? In twee artikels oor Camus wat laasjaar in die BY verskyn het maak André P. Brink geen geheim van sy minagting van Sartre nie. Hy noem hom ‘n “blinkboetie” wat neergesien het op Camus se arm herkoms en afgunstig was op sy sukses; ‘n “vername heer” wat ”te papbroekig was om self ’n negatiewe resensie te skryf [oor 'n boek van Camus] en liewer ’n snuiter van ’n student gevra het om Camus namens hom te beswadder.” Brink gaan so ver as om Sartre as ‘n “skeeloog-dwerg” te beskryf, nou nie juis die soort taalgebruik wat spreek van sensitiwiteit oor liggaamlike gebreke nie…

Daar is baie sulke voorbeelde. Minagting, irrasionele woede, agtelose afwysing: Sartre moet in sy graf wens hy kon eerder maar net van vergeet word! In werklikheid is Sartre darem ‘n veel meer komplekse figuur as wat sulke maklike, soms hete verdoeming suggereer. Sartre was ongetwyfeld een van die eerste Westerse filosowe wat ernstig aandag gegee het aan rassisme en kolonialisme — as maatskaplike en politieke kwessies maar ook as inherent aan die Westerse filosofiese tradisie. (In hierdie verband word sy vaderskap van die sg. postkoloniale teorie dikwels ten onregte onderbeklemtoon.) Hy het hom bemoei met die komplekse, dikwels teenstrydige prosesse van dekolonisasie, terwyl denkers soos Derrida en selfs Foucault amper geen aandag daaraan in hulle werk gegee het nie. So kan ’n mens aangaan; jy hoef nie ‘n eksistensialis te wees of Sartre se vele foute te oorsien om te besef dat hierdie denker en skrywer ‘n beduidende rol gespeel het in die desentrering van ‘n alte Eurosentriese politieke en filosofiese tradisie. 

Octavio Paz het ‘n kritisiese maar waarderende essay oor Sartre opgeneem in sy On Poets and Others, waarin hy onder meer die volgende skryf: “I believe he was not a good traveler: he had too many opinions. His real journeys he took around himself, shut up in his room. Sartre’s candor, his frankness and rectitude, impressed me as much as the solidity of his convictions. These two qualities were not at odds: his agility was that of the heavyweight boxer. He lacked grace but made up for it with a hearty, direct style. This lack of affectation was itself an affectation and could go beyond frankness to bluntness. Nonetheless, he welcomed the stranger cordially, and one guessed he was harsher with himself than with others. He was chubby and a little slow in movement; a round, unfinished face: more than a face, a ground plan of a face. The thick lenses of his spectacles made his person seem more remote. But one only had to hear him to forget his face. It’s odd: though Sartre has written subtle pages on the meaning of the look and the act of looking, the effect of his conversation was quite the opposite; he annulled the power of sight.”

Paz het Sartre persoonlik geken. Hulle het ernstige verskille gehad oor die filosofie, die letterkunde en die politiek, maar Paz se skets van Sartre is nogtans ruimhartiger en mensliker as Brink se minagtende en geniepsige verwysing na Sartre as ‘n “skeeloog dwerg”. Besluit maar self wie jy in hierdie verband bereid is om te glo, Brink of Octavio Paz… 

Indien jy belangstel om ‘n goeie herwaardering van Sartre se politieke denke te lees, spesifiek in die konteks van dekolonisering en die postkoloniale situasie, kan ek Paige Arthur se onlangse boek, Unfinished Projects: Decolonization and the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (Verso, 2010) van harte aanbeveel. Behalwe dat dit Sartre en ander Franse filosowe se werk polities kontekstualiseer, is dit ook ‘n goeie inleiding tot Sartre se belangrikste politieke geskrifte – onder andere sy veelbesproke inleiding tot Frantz Fanon se Black Skin, White Masks. Ek het baie lanklaas aan Sartre aandag gegee, maar hierdie was regtig ‘n openbarende boek.

Maar sou ek een van Sartre se romans of toneelstukke weer lees?        

William Carlos Williams

Ek lees nog steeds Octavio Paz se gebundelde essays oor digters en die digkuns, On Poets and Others. Kan jy jou ‘n beter beskrywing van William Carlos Williams se estetika, en sy benadering tot die gedig as ‘n talige objek, voorstel as hierdie: ”From the time he started writing, Williams evinced a distrust of ideas. It was a reaction against the symbolist aesthetic shared by the majority of poets at the time and in which, in his case, American pragmatism was combined with his medical profession. In a famous poem he defines his search: ‘To compose, not ideas but in things.’ But things are always beyond, on the other side: the ‘thing itself’ is untouchable. Thus Williams’s point of departure is not things but sensation. And yet sensation in turn is formless and instantaneous; one cannot build or do anything with pure sensations: that would result in chaos. Sensation is amphibious: at the same time it joins us to and divides us from things. It is the door through which we enter into things but also which we come out of them and realize that we are not things. In order for sensation to accede to the objectivity of things it must itself be changed into a thing. The agent of change is language: the sensations are turned into verbal objects. A poem is a verbal object in which two contradictory properties are fused: the liveliness of sensation and the objectivity of things.”

Hoe word sensasies dan omgesit in verbale, talige objekte? Volgens Paz, “by the operation of a force which for Williams is not essentially distinct from electricity, steam, or gas: imagination.” Die verbeelding is dus ‘n kreatiewe krag wat objekte, ook gedigte, tot stand bring. Die gedig is nie ‘n representasie van ‘n sensasie of ‘n objek nie; die gedig is nie ‘n dubbelganger nie, maar ‘n selfstandige objek. Die verbeelding maak gedigte, “objects which were not real before. The poetic imagination produces poems, pictures, and cathedrals as nature produces pines, clouds, and crocodiles.”

Volgens Paz, dan: “Williams wrings the neck of traditional aesthetics: art does not imitate nature: it imitates its creative processes. It does not copy its products but its modes of production.” Hiermee dan die baie bekende van Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Octavio Paz

Die nuwe semester is op hande en ek moet ‘n honeursmodule in sosiale sielkunde voorberei, maar dit is yskoud in Stellenbosch en ek is nog lui na ‘n paar dae vakansie in die Oos-Kaap. In pleks van werk sit ek dus by my lessenaar en luilees ‘n essay oor Walt Whitman in Octavio Paz se pragtige bundel, On Poets and Others.

Die essay is oorspronklik in 1956 geskryf en die bundel is deur Michael Schmidt vertaal en in 1987 deur Carcanet Press uitgegee. Ek het dit op die rak in die J.S. Gerickebiblioteek gevind terwyl ek eintlik op soek was na ‘n heel ander boek. Trouens, ek het al klaar vergeet wat die titel van daardie ander boek was…

So begin Paz se essay oor Whitman: “Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude; his monologue is a universal chorus. No doubt there are at least two people in him: the public poet and the private person who conceals his true erotic inclinations. But the mask — that of the poet of democracy — is rather more than a mask; it is his true face. [...] The uniqueness of Whitman’s poetry in the modern world cannot be explained except as a function of another, even greater, uniqueness which includes it: that of America.”

In hierdie opsig merk Paz op dat Amerika streng gesproke nooit ontdek is nie. Jy kan nie iets ontdek wat nie bestaan nie. ‘n Mens moet eerder praat van die uitvinding (lees ook: verbeelding en verdigting) van Amerika. “If America is a creation of the European spirit, it begins to emerge from the sea-mists centuries before the expedition of Columbus. And what the Europeans discover when they reach these lands is their own historic dream.”

Walt Whitman

Amerika, skryf Paz, is ‘n beliggaming van ‘n Europese utopie. “The dream becomes a reality, a present; America is a present: a gift, a given of history. But it is an open present, a today that is tinged with tomorrow. The presence and the present of America are a future; our continent is, by its nature, the land which does not exist on its own, but as something which is created and invented. Its being, its reality or substance, consists of being always future, history which is justified not by the past but by what is to come. Our foundation is not what America was but what it will be. America never was; and it is, only if it is utopia, history on its way to a golden age.”

Die stryd vir onafhanklikheid van Europa en die verskillende Amerikaanse revolusies, Noord sowel as Suid, dien as “a correction of American history and, as such, a restoration of the original reality.” Hierdie realiteit is, volgens Paz, die beginsel van die toekoms: “Thanks to French revolutionary principles, Latin America becomes again what it was at its birth: not a past, but a future, a dream.” Ek hou nogal van hierdie idee van ‘n soort “utopiese surplus”; die idee dat die mees werklikheidsgetroue uitbeelding van ‘n land die droom, en meer spesifiek, die toekomsdroom is. Op hierdie manier word die verbeelding verhef tot ‘n realiteitsbeginsel, ‘n dryfveer van die geskiedenis en die politiek, eerder as bloot ‘n bron van valse bewussyn wat teenoor “realisme” en “pragmatisme” gestel kan word.

Maar hierdie utopiese dimensie van (veral Noord-)Amerikaanse selfskepping het natuurlik ook ‘n donker sy, en die digkuns kan nie sondermeer in diens van die utopiese verbeelding gestel word nie. “The North American attitude can be condemned in these terms: all that does not have a part in the utopian nature of America does not properly belong to history: it is a natural event and, thus, it doesn’t exist; or it exists only as an inert obstacle, not as an alien conscience. Evil is outside, part of the natural world — like Indians, rivers, mountains, and other obstacles which must be domesticated or destroyed; or it is an intrusive reality (the English past, Spanish Catholocism, monarchy, etc.). The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. [...] In other places the future is a human attribute: because we are men, we have a future; in the Anglo-Saxon America of the last century, the process is inverted and the future determines man: we are men because we have a future. And whatever has no future is not man. Thus, reality leaves no gap at all for contradiction, ambiguity, or conflict to appear.”

Amerikaanse Indiaan

Waar laat dit die groot Walt Whitman, volgens Octavio Paz? “Whitman can sing confidently and in blithe innocense about democracy militant because the American utopia is confused with and indistinguishable from American reality. Whitman’s poetry is a great prophetic dream, but it is a dream within another even greater one that feeds it. America is dreamed in Whitman’s poetry because it is a dream itself. And it is dreamed as a concrete reality, almost a physical reality, with its men, its rivers, its cities and mountains. All that huge mass or reality moves lightly, as if it were weightless; and in fact, it is without historic weight: it is the future incarnate. The reality Whitman sings is utopian. By this I do not mean it is unreal or exists only as idea, but that its essence, what enlivens it, justifies and makes sense of its progress and gives weight to its movements, is the future. [...] Whitman was never aware that he dreamed and always thought himself a poetic realist. And he was, but only insofar as the reality he celebrated was not something given, but a substance crossed and recrossed by the future.”

Walt Whitman, Amerika se groot dromer, laat ons dus nie met ‘n onproblematiese voorbeeld van hoe die “utopiese surplus” van ‘n bepaalde werklikheid, die van Afrika byvoorbeeld, ontgin en geaktiveer kan word nie. Wat is die verband dus tussen digter, digkuns en die utopiese? Hoe verbeel die digter die toekoms anders? Wat is die rol van die Ander in die digterlike verbeelding? Is daar hoegenaamd nog enige sin daarin om oor die digkuns in verhouding tot die utopiese te dink?